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Shallow Things, Serious Ones and James L. Brooks Shooting Spanglish at Mom's House

Shallow Materialistic Things, Serious Important Meaningful Ones and James L. Brooks Shooting Spanglish at Mom's House

I so want this jacket that I've been seeing on Gwyneth and Cate Blanchette (sp?), but of course I can't afford it so I'm going to ask my friend Atra if she can knit me a kind of knock of version of it.

Hello My Journal Darlings,

We stayed away for a full week at our house in the desert. I love it there so much that it's always hard for us to come home. There's something about the dry sunny days and the crisp cold night air that makes me happy. The mountains and the desert scrub and scenery just does something for my soul. Plus there's the lack of traffic and congestion and filthy smog filled air that we have here in LA, and I get to escape from my problems and take a little break from the cats.

Thanksgiving was weird but I focused on being grateful for my health and family, small and strange though it may be. Scott was wonderful the whole time and gets five platinum stars for his behavior amidst the weirdness. Beau does not get platinum stars or even black ones. One of our favorite teachers, Miss Ali, who was trying to stamp out color discrimination of any kind would give out black stars in place of gold ones and I always thought that was so cool. Beau and I think of her often and wonder where she is.

Beau isn't used to having to dress up -- the whole coat and tie thing, but he tried to be a good sport about it. Where he got hung up was in the behaving himself at dinner part of the evening. We went to my Mom's club and he was bored, miserable and slouchy, which may not be that outrageous for a thirteen year old, but when he refused to eat a single bite of the $40.00 meal because he didn't like the silverware and was mad at me because I wouldn't let him drive the golf cart, alone in the dark, back to our house to get stainless flatware, that's when I got kind of fed up. I'd put up with his putting his napkin on his head, acting bored and covering his face with his hands because I wouldn't let him put his head down on the table, but the silverware issue had me seeing red.

He's just so fussy and persnickety sometimes and I veer between blaming myself for having always jumped in to rescue him from any discomfort and spoiling him, (hate that word), and wondering if there isn't something more organic happening considering his bio-Dad definitely has some kind of psychological weirdness going on and so do I. Then there's the fact that things were not exactly rosy and easy throughout my pregnancy with my barfing every day and working long hours while Robby, (my ex -- God, it used to be so hard to say that, my ex, and now it's a relief, so sad and so comforting at the same time -- that we can and do survive these things that we never think we'll live through), drank, partied, and cheated on me, leaving me feeling totally abandoned, stressed out, lonely, frightened and hurting. Then there was the whole three year house remodel fiasco with our moving three times in three years with Robby and I both cheating on each other while we tried to hang on to the familiar comfort of our family life at the same time. Horrible, painful, stressful times that had to have had an impact on Beau, and then Robby just took off and turned into another person or became the person he always was all along.

Blah, I hate talking about this stuff, nothing new here, just stuff I need to record in my journal because its up for me. I have been taking Beau to tutoring and began having him assessed for learning disabilities and anything else but it's so incredibly expensive that we've had to put the testing part of things on hold for the time being. I had nightmares last night about my Mother confronting the psychologist and complaining about the cost. The weirdest part of this was that she was growing crystals from her spit and so was Beau. I haven't even tried to analyze that one yet.

I have a little bit of a cold virus thing that's been hanging in here for a while darn it, and Beau's been working me on letting him skip school -- he's so good at this, he comes in early in the morning when he knows I've finally dropped off to sleep from exhaustion and talks to me when I'm only half awake. He knows that I don't really know what's going on and will agree to pretty much anything when I'm in this state. He's going to have a wee bit of a surprise though when I tell him he can't have his friend Steven over tonight because if he feels too rotten to go to school then he doesn't get to have a playdate the same night, nya ha ha.

I've been getting my Christmas/holiday shopping done and that's kind of a relief -- that I don't leave it to the last minute like I used to. Money continues to be a worry. It's hard to find balance between wanting to fill my painful raggedy spiritual hole with food and stuff, and wanting to be productive, make money and save it. I've been going collage mad lately and that's been a wonderful boost for my self esteem. I spent a good amount of time organizing my cut out boxes into plastic Ziploc baggies while we were in the desert.

We also saw some movies. We went out to see Bad Santa which I hate to say I really enjoyed, mainly because I'm a rebel and I like any movie that is so raunchy it beats out anything I can ever remember seeing for having the word Fuck said in it the most times. I rented a really depressing documentary about a troubled young man that I couldn't even finish watching and Auto Focus the Greg Kinnear movie about the messed up sexual escapades or sexual addiction and life of Bob Crane which was so sad I couldn't watch the ending, and a movie that I surprisingly loved with Burt Reynolds and Julie Christie.

Robert Brooks, or one of the Brooks, but not Albert, (hang on I'll go look this up), James L. Brooks is going to be filming his a href="<http://www.thezreview.co.uk/comingsoon/s/spanglish.htm">new movie Spanglish</a> at my Mom's house in Bel Air next Tuesday and Wednesday. I think it stars Adam Sandler, Anne Bancroft and Tea Leoni, I love Tea Leoni and thought she was so good in the first Bad Boys movie with Will Smith. I'm going to sneak over to her house to see if I can snag some pictures or get some gossip for you. Imagine the money and clout these guys must have to be able to shut down Stone Canyon -- we're talking a major street with thousands of homes, very expensive, multimillion dollar homes for five hours for two days in a row. Imagine how pissed off people will be.

Oh great the washing machine just broke, more expenses, the phone isn't working in Beau's room, which I find suspicious and will need to investigate, the computers are acting slow and funky, my back yard is a junk yard of at risk for weather damage precious stuff that should be safely tucked away in the as yet unfinished garage, and now the washing machine, argh, what else?

On the weight loss follow up front I have been at a plateau for a few weeks and still haven't broke the miserable two hundred pound threshold, but I've also been a lazy butt and have been eating pretty much whatever I want, which isn't too much but is certainly more than I ate when I first had my surgery.

I had to put my old friend Coco to sleep last week, (I cried and cried and am trying to stay as numb as possible with the help of antidepressants wheeee), which sucks and hurts and makes me angry and sad coming on the heels of having had to put Precious to sleep a couple of weeks before and now Buki, Zazu and Twinkle are all in the hospital with different problems. Buki, who I worship, literally, is our oldest cat. He's so old that no one knows how old he is. He has freckly scabs all over his nose and forehead because the woman he lived with for many years let him spend a lot of time outdoors in an enclosure and he's all white and doesn't have enough pigment to protect his skin from the sun. He also has a bad heart so I'm really worried about him. Zazu has lost weight, her eyes are acting up (the damned, [and I do mean damned as in damn it to hell the evil fucking thing] herpes virus that we caught from cats we adopted from a woman I'd rather not write about, love the cats, hate her), and she has diarrhea, and my beloved Twinkle is shedding his coat and has lost his appetite. So much worry and cost. I hate it.

I had a wonderful time last night at my new friend Atra's house. Beau, Scott and I love this family so much. When we were driving back from the desert Beau asked me if I could guess what the first three things he wanted to do when he got home were and the second thing, right after coming in and hugging all of Irma's kids was going to see Atra. I think its a testament to her kindness and graciousness as a hostess that my rebellious thirteen year old son would want to go over and hang out with these wonderful people.

We picked a lot of fruit from our fruit trees in Palm desert, grapefruit, oranges, tangerines, lemons and kumquats to bring home and give to our friends. I put a bag together for Atra and her family and gave her a squishy Santa pillow that she called a Papa Noel and a red evil eye bracelet. I bought some nice Cognac for Scott to give to Atra's husband Atar and we went over and they made a special dinner for us. We had vegetable soup and potato pancakes called cucoos and we drank Chambord liqueur and everyone was so kind and welcoming. I came home feeling so loved and full and happy.

Now I just have to tear my house apart to find my wallet, put up with Beau's being angry with me that I won't let him have Steven over, go to my Mom's to work out some bank related stuff, and then pick up Atra and take her to Jennifer's so she can get paid for the scarfs she made last week and pick up some more scarf kits. Rush, rush, rush.

Tell me about your Thanksgivings, how are you all? I missed you.

Big loving hugs,JacquiXOXOXOX

PS: Just in case I haven't mixed you up enough with all my talk of heavy and light, serious and mundane things, here's a link to the Oprah's Favorite Things show that I missed but you can still see the fun things she's promoting on line.